When a mobile device prepares to transmit data across a mobile network, a battery drain cost is incurred due to the initial overhead process of waking up the radio and establishing a communication connection with a cell tower. This initial overhead varies based on physical location, network carrier, type of connection, etc., but it can be large enough to justify maintaining the established connection for an extra duration after the network data has been transmitted so that further overhead costs can be reduced. Mobile devices are typically designed to handle transactions immediately for time-critical or user-facing operations (such as placing phone calls, sending text messages, etc.,) and for such operations, the setup overhead costs are justified. However, other background operations that are not necessarily time-sensitive can cause radio wake up and unnecessarily drain the battery.